The Great Convergence from a West-European Perspective: Some Thoughts and Hypotheses

In: Itinerario: international journal on the history of European expansion and global interaction, Band 24, Heft 3-4, S. 9-28

Abstract

Between 1995 and 2000 a number of synthetic studies on the economic history of Asia in the Early Modern Period were published which have changed – or should change – our ideas and perceptions of the 'rise of the west' and the parallel 'decline of the east' in a fundamental way. The potential impact of these studies is comparable to that of a previous brief spell of brilliance in our profession, the early 1970s, with the pioneering publications by, amongst others, Wallerstein, Brenner, and North and Thomas. Whereas these studies proposed fundamentally new views on the long term dynamics of the 'rise of the west', and concentrated heavily on the economic and socio-political history of Europe (albeit sometimes within a 'world system perspective'), the new generation of innovative works focuses on a new analysis of the economic history of parts of Asia - on China and India in particular. Much of the detailed empirical research on which this revisionism is based, was done before the books of Goody, Frank, Wong, Pomeranz, and Lee and Wang were published, and forerunners of the revisionism can be identified. But only now the movement has created a clear set of hypotheses that challenges the accepted wisdom about die economic and institutional contrasts between both sides of the Eurasian Continent.